Recent sexual health concerns “more pubic than public,” warns Argentinean bishop

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Oct 1, 2006 / 22:00 pm

Bishop Jorge Lozano, Bishop of Gualeguaychu and head of youth ministry for the Bishops’ Conference of Argentina, has criticized political leaders for focusing sexual policies on mere genital activity rather than considering proper sexual formation.

In an article published by the Argentinean daily “La Nacion,” the bishop recalled two well publicized cases of sexual abuse and rape in his country.  The bishop worried that the overarching issues of the cases “may become blurred.”

In both instances, he said, “the so-called debate was over abortion” and the sexual education of teenagers.  Unfortunately, he pointed out, “little was said about the sexual education of adults, who were responsible for this outrage against intimacy.”
 
“We adults speak of how young people live out their sexuality and we organize educational programs that they need.  And what about at home?  Aren’t adults the greatest consumers of pornography? Are not adults the ones who run the business of sex trade and human trafficking?” the bishop asked.

Bishop Lozano said that in today’s society, “the sexual act is increasingly divorced from mutual consent, from dialogue, from interpersonal encounter, and from love.”  In the exaltation of pleasure, he said, the satisfaction of the body is sought without any connection to the person.

In this sense he criticized the “sexual health and reproductive” public policies for being oriented towards “a view of genital activity disconnected not only from the person but also from love and from sexuality itself…. We need to go from ‘pubic policies’ to true public policies.  To think of sexuality as mere genital activity is reductionist.”

Bishop Lozano also criticized a new law that legalizes tubal ligations and vasectomies, which “without any debate in society and barely any congressional debate” has turned a crime into a right.  He said it appears that the legislation is aimed at keeping poor people, who are already marginalized, from reproducing, as if they were “the cause of underdevelopment and poverty,” when in reality these are caused by “the concentration of riches in the hands of a few and the accumulation of poverty in many.”

The bishop said public policy should address real, not imagined, problems.  “The poor ask how they will feed their children, not how to have them.  We love them by giving them more space in our lives, not by telling them how many children we are willing to let them have.”

Lastly, the bishop reminded Argentineans that the real concern is to make life for all more dignified and “to make the arrival of new life just as desired as life itself.”